If you believe, as I do, that American institutions are hitting a creaky middle age, then you have a lot of time for [the Republican’s] argument. If you believe that there has been a hardening of the national arteries caused by a labyrinthine tax code, an unsustainable Medicare program and a suicidal addiction to deficits, then you appreciate this streamlining agenda, even if you don\u2019t buy into the whole Ayn Rand-influenced gospel of wealth….<\/p>\n
On the one hand, you see the Republicans taking the initiative, offering rejuvenating reform. On the other hand, you see an exhausted Democratic Party, which says: We don\u2019t have an agenda, but we really don\u2019t like theirs. Given these options, the choice is pretty clear.<\/p>\n
But there is a flaw in the vision the Republicans offered in Tampa. It is contained in its rampant hyperindividualism. Speaker after speaker celebrated the solitary and heroic individual. There was almost no talk of community and compassionate conservatism. There was certainly no conservatism as Edmund Burke understood it, in which individuals are embedded in webs of customs, traditions, habits and governing institutions.<\/p>\n